Apple’s Unlocked 3G iPhones Launching in Taiwan

The famous 3G iPhone has finally reached Taiwan with the current largest network service provider, CHT (Chunghwa Telecom) be the sole iPhone smartphones’ vendor in the island. Surprisingly, the 3G generation iPhone is claimed to be open to any service providers in opposing of what being normally practiced in most of the countries such as United States, Japan and etc. Of course, this is with condition that they pay the full device cost without getting any subsidy from service providers.

There are two options that Taiwanese consumers can select depending on their preference. First one is a 2-year contract basis and consumers will able to obtain a brand new 8GB iPhone for without any charge (fully subsidized by CHT), with condition that they sign a two-year contract with CHT and a monthly subscription of NT$2549 (around $76). Alternatively, they can make one time payment of NT$26600 ($800) or NT$29900 ($900) to obtain an unlocked 8GB or 16GB iPhones respectively that can be used with other service providers without any restriction.

Chunghwa Telecom is targeting to push 50,000 3G iPhones to its market space by first quarter of 2009 and some do believe that those unlocked phones may contribute quite a significant percentage especially in overseas markets although it is a bit pricey, even more expensive than the selling price by AT&T in United States.